Battle lines: PM Modi will kick off a host of projects in poll-bound Bihar during visit

The Centre is looking to shower sops on Bihar in a bid to woo its electorate ahead of the upcoming Assembly elections in the state.

According to party sources, the Union Cabinet has given a green signal to many projects ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s one-day visit to the pollbound state on July 25.

As battle lines have been drawn for the elections, the saffron party does not want to be behind bête noire Nitish Kumar in pushing their own development agenda.

Party insiders say development will remain an important poll plank despite caste equations playing a key role in the state elections. Many projects related to roads, power and education, will be announced in the coming days.

“While some projects are new, some have been pending for some time now. The pending ones will be given a green signal by the Union government very soon,” a party leader said.

Long-pending projects include a new bridge over river Ganga near Mokama. The setting-up of institutes like IIT and AIIMS will be some other projects which are likely to get the Centre’s nod in the coming days.

Besides, a 4,000-mw ultramega power plant, expansion of the Indian Oil refinery and the revival of the fertilizer factory Barauni will be some more projects which are likely to make the cut.

The BJP is also likely to announce a comprehensive plan for the development of the old Vikramshila University and the setting up of another central university on the lines of Nalanda University.

The new varsity assumes significance as Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is an MLA from Nalanda Assembly segment.

Confirming the news, state BJP leader Sushil Modi said, “The PM will announce a package for Bihar and set up a roadmap for the development at a public meeting in Muzaffarpur on July 25.” Modi will also release the ‘vision 2050’ prepared by the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR).

Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh said Modi will inaugurate three new projects — Farmers First, Arya and Mera Gaon Mera Gaurav (My village my pride) — to stress on the 'lab to land' concept of the Centre.

The agriculture minister said Patna was chosen to host ICAR foundation day celebrations because Bihar has had an important place in the history of agricultural research.

The country's first agriculture research and education institute — Indian Agricultural Research Institute, then known as Imperial Institute of Agricultural Research — was established at Pusa in Samastipur district in 1905.

The state will also see the setting up of food parks, broadband connectivity in rural areas and software parks in cities like Muzaffarpur, Bhagalpur and Darbhanga.

Sources said that PM may also inaugurate Daniyawan-Biharsharif railway line in the state.

A medical institute was announced for Bihar in the Union Budget by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who had said: “Keeping in view the need to augment medical services in Bihar, I propose to set up another AIIMS-like institution in the state.”

The prime minister’s rally will also kickstart the BJP’s campaign in the state.

The BJP believes that Modi’s magic will work in favour of the party and sources claim the BJP’s state unit has requested the central leadership to schedule three more rallies of the PM ahead of the announcement of the poll schedule.

Nitish calls BJP master of repackaging

The BJP may be looking to make the most of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the state, but Chief minister Nitish Kumar is ready to prick its bubble of enthusiasm.

Modi is slated to arrive in Bihar on a one-day trip on July 25, during which he is scheduled to inaugurate some highprofile projects, including the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology-Patna campus.

The BJP is hoping to make use of these projects as part of its election campaign, but Nitish is set spoil its party.

The chief minister asserted that most of the projects to be inaugurated by the prime minister were either his “dream projects” or had been initiated by the previous UPA government.

“The Prime minister is coming to inaugurate IIT-Patna which is basically my dream project,” Nitish said in Patna.

“It has come into being because of my efforts,” he added.

Nitish said that the IIT was initially to be set up in collaboration with the government of Japan but Japan later tied up with another project in south India.

“The then prime minister Manmohan Singh had invited me to the official banquet hosted in honour of his Japanese counterpart,” he said.

“I met the then Union human resource minister Arjun Singh and told him about the Japanese project.

He asked me whether I was interested in the Japanese collaboration or the IIT in Bihar,” he recalled. “I said I was interested in the IIT.”

The chief minister said the state government subsequently provided a makeshift campus for the IIT and gave 500 acres of land at Bihta near Patna, where the news campus had come up. “Even the new Daniyawan- Biharsharif railway line, which would be inaugurated by the prime minister, was sanctioned during my tenure as the railway minister,” he said.

The CM said the PM is also scheduled to launch a natural gas pipeline in Patna, which was actually sanctioned by the previous government.

“The BJP leaders are actually the masters of repackaging,” he said.

“They repackage the old schemes and pass them off as their own. The people need to be cautious about it,” Nitish added.

Nitish also cited the example of the new Digha-Pahlejaghat road-cum-rail bridge on the river Ganga.

“I had got the rail bridge sanctioned as the railway minister and got it inaugurated by then PM Vajpayee,” he said.

Nitish, who dedicated the longest flyover in the state to the people on Tuesday, said BJP leaders raised a hue and cry every time he inaugurated for a new project.

Paswan says he declined offer to be CM

Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan, who snapped his five-year-old ties with RJD chief Lalu Prasad during Lok Sabha polls last year and aligned with BJP, says the two never had a meeting of hearts even when they were together.

“I never had a heart to heart relationship with Lalu. Even he did not have it with me. I never wanted to go with Lalu in an alliance. Except once in 2010 Assembly polls, I never fought elections in Bihar in alliance with Lalu. In 2009 I was in UPA due to Congress president Sonia Gandhi's initiative,” Paswan said in a interview.

LJP chief Ram Vilas Paswan feels all development claims made by Nitish are false

He was replying to queries on how he could attack Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar for allying with Lalu when he himself had fought elections in alliance with the RJD chief in the past.

The LJP chief was the first to quit NDA after the Gujarat riots in 2002 and his Lok Janshakti Party had been in an alliance with the RJD since 2009. Prasad and Paswan were also ministers in UPA-I government.

In the first few years of the UPA-I, both had bitter relations, which was said to have emanated because of claims over the railway portfolio. The two had come together only when 2009 Lok Sabha polls had neared, when they had dumped Congress resulting in disastrous results for all the three parties.

Unhappy with the delay in firming up seat-sharing arrangements with Congress and RJD in 2014 Lok Sabha polls, Paswan broke ties with RJD and sealed an alliance with BJP which led to a turnaround in his party’s fortunes.

Paswan has been very critical of Lalu in recent months and even predicted doom for Nitish Kumar in the upcoming Assembly polls because of his alliance with the RJD chief.

“Lalu is one person who keeps one hand on the neck of his alliance partner and another on the feet,” Paswan said.

On the 2009 poll debacle, he claimed that Lalu benefited from his vote base, but the RJD chief ’s supporters did not vote for LJP.

Paswan, whose party has dropped hints of his chief ministerial ambitions, ruled himself out of the race for the top post. The LJP president feels that not declaring a CM candidate is helping the alliance in Bihar.

He said it is BJP's right to claim chief ministership if the NDA comes to power as it is the largest party.

“In 1990, VP Singh wanted me to become chief minister. I declined. Later when I joined NDA, Vajpayee wanted me to be the CM candidate in Bihar. Similarly, after February 2005 elections, I could have become chief minister. I have declined it thrice,” Paswan claimed, while adding that this time it was the BJP’s right to claim chief ministership if the NDA came to power.

“We are fighting under the leadership of Narendra Modi under NDA. Whoever is chosen by him as chief minister is acceptable to us,” he said.

Paswan said that the results of the recently-concluded MLC elections, in which the NDA won 14 out of 24 seats, indicate the strong position of the Narendra Modi-led alliance.

Replying to a question why NDA or BJP are not declaring their chief ministerial candidate for Bihar if they are confident of winning the polls, Paswan said: “Why should NDA declare its CM candidate simply because Lalu and Nitish have done. They had no other face. So they did it. We have many good leaders. We will fight the Assembly election in Bihar under collective leadership. We have won Assembly elections in Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand when we did not declare a CM candidate and fought under collective leadership.”

Though there was some speculation about Paswan firming a tie-up with Nitish Kumar in the run-up to Lok Sabha polls last year and both had praised each other before BJP and LJP finally joined hands, Paswan insists he did not have good relations with the JD(U) leader.

Attacking Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar over his development claims, the Lok Janshakti Party chief said such assertions made by Nitish were fake.